Several supporters and patrons of the Fannin County Public Library spoke to the importance of the library and implored the Fannin County Board of Commissioners to move forward with the state library grant when the board met for a town hall meeting Tuesday, May 4.
Library Board of Trustees Chair John Turner discussed the need for a new, adequate library stating, “We’ve gone a generation without a real, modern public library space that can accommodate the kinds of things that a modern library does … Our current library, despite the efforts of a wonderful staff who are very dedicated and very knowledgeable and very willing to help people, despite their efforts, we just can’t do the things we need to do in our current space and have not been able to do for a very long time.”
He continued by addressing the significance of the county receiving the grant, which totals $1,383,000 and requires a county match of $582,000.
“The grant was provided to us by the Georgia General Assembly, and that didn’t just happen,” Turner said. “That took effort by a lot of people working, for a long time, to get us to the top of the list to be funded. … That is our taxpayer money. Fannin County citizens have paid state taxes to support libraries all across the state of Georgia. Finally, some of that money is returned to us.”
He told the board that the alternative to accepting and matching the funds would be to essentially give it to another county and lose the funding altogether.
“The effect would be, we’re paying for somebody else’s library,” he said. “It’s my position that we need to take this great deal that our House Speaker (David Ralston) has worked for us, grab it and make this thing happen.”
Resident Kathy Thompson explained that in many ways Fannin County is the envy of the state, but not when it comes to the county’s library.
“Our library is still too small, 49 years later, and still under-funded,” Thompson said. “When the stand-alone library was torn down 20 years ago, there was a promise made that there would be a stand-alone library. It’s 20 years later. We have failed our children. When you go to the library, the librarians do these wonderful programs for children, they do summer programming, but it’s totally limited by the fact that kids only have a little section of the library and they make noise, and the rest of the people in the library can hardly use the library because the kids are having a good time.”
She also warned the board of the dangers of declining the grant.
“If we don’t find a way to take this opportunity for 20 years, at least 10, because the thing is this is the second time that this county has been offered money for a library,” she said. “Let’s say that we say, ‘Well this is just not a good time. Bad Building. Blah blah,’ and we go down the list. It takes you about ten years to go from the bottom of the list to the top of the list. Then, you get back up to the top of the list and you have a track record, and your track record is twice you talked about it and talked about it, you looked at it and you didn’t do anything. So, there’s no assurance that in 10 years anybody would trust us.”
Several other people within the community echoed their concerns and reiterated the need of a new and improved library.
Chairman Jamie Hensley told those in attendance that he is working to purchase a piece of property to house a new library within the City of Blue Ridge; however, he floated the idea of people in the community working to raise additional funds to help build it.
“You would have room, even if you started within 10,000 square feet, you would have room to build on,” Hensley said while discussing the piece of property. “That’s a start.”